Dodgy director behind CDs shortage

The man at the centre of a Europe-wide shortage of CDs and DVDs has been banned from being a company director in Britain and has a string of business controversies behind him, the Evening Standard can reveal.

Out of reach: a shortage of DVDs and CDs at Christmas led a drop in the share price of Entertainment Rights

Christmas was ruined in households throughout the UK after many CDs and DVDs made in Europe under licence for companies like Universal failed to materialise in British shops.

Shares in Entertainment Rights, the British company that distributes DVDs of favourite children's characters like Postman Pat and Rupert the Bear, crashed last month after it admitted the extent of the missing discs problem.

The Evening Standard can now reveal that the shortages have resulted from the collapse of the east German manufacturing operation of Europe's largest CD manufacturer Optical Disc Service.

While the failure of operations at ODS has caused a political stink in Germany over €43m (£32m) of state aid to the company, the controversy looks certain to have serious ramifications in the UK after it emerged that ODS has been run and co-owned by sometime London businessman Wilhelm Mittrich.

Mittrich, 59, a German national, was banned from doing business in the UK and found unfit to be a company director in 2004 following the failure with £10m of debts of Point Group, an internet music company backed by rock legend Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac.

A planned flotation of Point Group had been pulled after the Close Brothers merchant bank refused to act for the company because of Mittrich's business record in the industry including rows over copyright infringements.

ODS has four facilities in the UK, including an office in Waterloo.

'ODS does business in the UK and Mittrich was chief executive of ODS. It has to be considered whether ODS or Mittrich has been in criminal breach of his company director disqualification order,' said a forensic investigator who has been chasing payments for British companies that have supplied ODS.

Mittrich has stepped down as chief executive and is understood to be in Bali. One attempt to contact him by email was responded to with a smily face icon.